Many computing devices such as, for example, personal computers, desktop computers, and various handheld computing devices include software that permits various types of media (e.g., audio, video, etc) to be played on the device. Such media-playing software typically plays or renders digital media in the form of audio and video data. Such computing devices may download a variety of musical composition files via music collection software (e.g., iTunes) and store such data on a hard disk integrated with the device. The music collection software organizes digital media file such as, for example, audio music tracks, in accordance with metadata or other digital properties data associated with the media files.
Metadata generally includes information pertaining to the media file and is usually stored within a file. For example, a particular audio file may include metadata such as, for example, a song title, artist name, date of release, genre, a thumbnail graphic, and so forth. The media file acquired from the music collection software may be automatically integrated with specified metadata types. Some media files acquired from remote sites via the Internet, however, lack metadata or may include metadata that is inconsistent or incomplete. As a result, large collections become difficult if not impossible to use because a user is forced to listen to the track to determine the metadata, and in most cases, are unable to identify the track of interest. Therefore, a need is required for obtaining relevant metadata for such media files.
In some existing systems, a user may request updated metadata for the media file by sending, via a media player, the incomplete metadata to a system capable of accessing additional metadata. Such systems, however, often fail to identify the correct media content associated with the received metadata due to the incompleteness or insufficiency of the received metadata. As such, existing systems are unable to return relevant metadata or provide correct metadata to the user, especially when dealing with large collections of music and related data.
Based on the foregoing, it is believed that a need exists for an improved music recognition method and system for retrieving metadata based on the content of a media file. A need also exists for a socialized music server that is capable of identifying musical content, as described in greater detail herein.